let's play
by Tokoloshe Monster
Summary: Johanna Mason didn't win the Hunger Games based on her kindness and empathy. She won because she was ruthless, and she must pay the price of survival. ::For District 14's prompt, Numbness:: Oneshot.


**A/N: I don't really like second person POV, but I thought I might as well give it a shot.**

**Written ****for ****District**** 14's ****prompt,**_** numbness**_**.**

* * *

><p><strong>let's play<strong>

When your name gets called out, almost the entire District sighs in relief. Everyone is glad that their children didn't get picked; that the disliked Johanna Mason will be shipped away instead. The breaths of the living tickles your skirt just a bit.

Your family trembles. Your friends shoot you piteous glances, but relief is written right down into their pores.

Because it's not them that get to die, they've dodged the Capitol's bullet. Instead it's going to be you trying to survive.

You walk up onstage and to begin to cry. Ever since you were put into the Reaping lot, you promised yourself you'd act weak. Be scrawny and pathetic. That way you could surprise everyone in the arena. You like surprising people, you love proving them wrong.

Your fat tears are only half-faked. There is fear embedded into your pounding heart, fizzing through your blood, eating your stomach.

The whole of Panem sees a pathetic fifteen-year-old girl with the ropy muscles and greasy hair, a girl with a square jaw and watery eyes.

You deattach yourself from all that. Your fear becomes what you are on the outside; your shell. Your mind is blank and cold, floating somewhere soft and where feeling can't hurt you while a different Johanna cries and weeps, sniveling pathetically.

[panem thinks you should grow some balls.]

~:~

The Capitol life passes by in a blur. Pretty and expensive dresses hang off your frame, probably costing more than your old house. You whimper at getting waxed, you deliver hopeless interviews, pretending to feel sorry for yourself. You do everything to make you seem more pathetic than you already are, everything to make your opponents underestimate you.

It's like a game of dress-up. You're a doll playing in a fancy house, projecting soppy orchestrated emotions while other people watch, disgusted, eager for you to get killed.

Okay, so maybe it's not _that_ much like dress up. But there are similarities.

_Let's play, Panem. Let's play._

The grooming for twenty three deaths and one survival continues. You already know you're going to be in the minority when it comes to results. It's almost your happy secret, being the hidden tiger. The Victor no-one saw coming.

You're kind of excited to get into the arena, to show everyone that you can survive. To prove yourself, to smile and say 'I told you so,' as you slit throats.

[panem thinks that you're not worth betting on.]

~:~

The arena is dark, illuminated by an unnaturally large and bright moon.

You're one of the people that runs straight to the Cornucopia before the other Tributes gather their bearings in the dark, with only the too-bright moonlight as their guide.

You get hold of two axes before most know that the battle is already on. The weight feels familiar in your hands, almost comforting. Like the way a beloved teddy-bear should feel to a child.

You know your aim will be perfect, of course. However, no-one else is aware of that yet. Those who do find out will be dead before they can tell anyone else.

Ah, how lovely secrets are. Although an entire nation will soon know yours.

You disappear into the night before anyone can kill you. You're fast, you're agile. You're ready to kill.

[panem thinks fear is propelling you away from the fight. but you know you're just waiting for the perfect moment to slay children.]

~:~

You hide out in trees, climbing them easily and listening to the never-ending night. Your skin glows in the moonlight. Your blades are two deadly shards of silver, attached to equally lethal hands.

You have no way of keeping track of time. The moon never moves, the sun never rises. So you start tracking others by looking for stomped-out fires and footprints illuminated by the fake starless sky.

You start your kills small with easy, whimpering targets. First it's that kid from Three that's too sickly to stand much of chance. He finds you first, so you pull the most pathetic face possible. He lowers his knife for a second in a moment of uncertainty, just as you lift your ax and swing it at his neck. A quick death.

You're not cruel, after all. Just a survivor.

Red-black stuff spurts, capturing the moonlight in a weird way. It dribbles down his neck and stains his Capitol-issued shirt.

A family will hate you forever, you realise.

You don't care. You're alive, he's not.

[panem thinks you got a lucky shot.]

~:~

Complex feelings don't make it to the arena. Things like loyalty, honesty and faith stay behind in glittering Capitol lights and in work-weary houses of the Districts.

Only the bare essentials remain. Hunger. Anger. Thirst.

Killkillkill.

Simple things. Crude, animal things.

Survive, but don't _live_.

Living in the arena would mean death. So you must only get by. Don't feel anything. Just kill.

Be thoughtless. Be numb.

[panem thinks you're a raging psychopath. you think they may be right.]

~:~

See that?

That pretty, sort-of red liquid staining your hands. It looks almost black under the artificial moon. White and black, red and white.

There's a lot of it. Rivers and rivers stretching across the marble valleys of your skin.

Oh, that's blood, you remember. Blood of the girl you just killed, clinging to your hands. Sticky, moist, your fault.

You don't care. You're winning, she's not.

Screams become sounds. Blood is just a liquid. Bodies are carcasses.

[panem think that you should wash off the blood and sweat and dirt staining your hard features. alas, hygiene is for people, not machines.]

~:~

You've killed a grand total of eight children; four weaklings, one Career, and three surprisingly strong Tributes from the the low-income Districts.

It comes down to you and the final other Tribute.

Dodge, kick, snarl. Punch.

Roll. Cut. Leap.

Throw. Kill.

Win.

[panem knows you're more animal than human at this point. they're used to winners like that.]

~:~

There is recovery time, and slowly those feelings that normal people have stir a bit inside you. Then it's back to the Capitol lights and then you're playing a game again, twisting your face into a smile, choking out words about thoughts and emotions that you don't have anymore.

Remorse bubbles a bit when you see the families of tributes and see your kills yet again.

_Outoutout. Goaway. Leavemealone._

Feelings.

_Nonono_. You don't want those.

What useless things. How terrible, how they _hurt_. You don't need them, you can't bear them. Feelings are for the strong. You're not strong, you can't bear this idea of actual emotion.

This numbness is so much better, so much easier. So much more natural.

[panem, of course, doesn't care about an unfeeling victor. it never does.]


End file.
